GI Tract Infection ~ Can feel kinda like dying.

Writer’s note: This post is going to talk about bodily functions up to and including crapping. If you have a vivid imagination or are easily grossed out you might want to skip this post. I don’t feel these are things people should really be ashamed about so I’m mentioning it with hopes that it’ll help educate other people who end up as scared as I was. Hopefully people googling their symptoms will end up here and not feel as lost as I did.

I had actually planned to update about the Vacation this weekend. Then something rather remarkable happened to me on Sunday. I ended up sick, exceptionally sick, I was experiencing something that I don’t recall ever experiencing before.

The short hand of it is that I likely got a bad Gastrointestinal Infection of some kind [food poisoning or something of that nature]. To say that the pain was crippling would be literal. The pain was so intense that I ended up almost instantly becoming drenched in sweat once I felt it. It was a strange experience to be there with a dry shirt and then seemingly without transition feeling as though I had fallen into a pool. There was no position I could take that made it anything less than horrifying.

It was a terrible experience and for a few minutes during it I literally thought I was going to die. There was no doubt in my mind that something truly terrible had happened to me. The pain was on a level I had never felt and didn’t even fathom could happen without disembowelment. I was so intensely subdued that I could barely send a text for water, much less voice just how terrible I felt and how genuinely scared I was.

Next part is going to get kinda graphic, but only slightly, just note it involves butts. It’s not human centipede bad though, so its all good. No blood involved so its not a total horror show. If your story is like mine but also features blood you should stop reading this and contact a doctor immediately I think, maybe do it anyways just to be safe. [No images mind you, just writing]

If you are someone who is googling incredible abdominal pain, excessive gas, unrelenting diarrhea, profuse sweating, nausea, vomiting, and extreme physical exhaustion-welcome, and I’m sorry you are here in this case.. You may have a GI Tract infection and if you are currently suffering through it I would suggest doing what I did. Once your body has officially evacuated every last ounce of food you ever so much as looked at in the last week or so jump into the shower. Turn it on to a nice warm (hot was my ticket) temperature and set the head to a rain like setting (aka “regular”). Then just lay back and let it wash over you. The constant contact at random intervals across the entire surface of your body will hopefully overload your senses, it’s the “hit your finger with a hammer to forget about your broken leg” idea but without using additional pain.

Try and think about things, anything really. Just concentrate on relaxing and think about things that make you happy. Perhaps stories of some kind, television shows, radio broadcasts, anything to help get your mind off of the obscene pain currently ravaging your insides. If you are like me the pain should subside fully in about an hour but you are going to be incredibly exhausted. If you find that it doesn’t stop in that time you probably should have someone drive you to the doctor (if possible).

Keep in mind I was only calm because the majority of my pain was in the lower left side of my body. If yours is in the lower right side you want to speak with a doctor immediately. Your appendix may have burst or you might have appendicitis. Then again I’m sure I have something important in the left side of my body too, I always ignore that poor side. I’m sorry lefty : (.

If you genuinely think you are dying, so did I, and thus far I’m still alive. It’s day 3 since (it happened Sunday Morning) and I’m in pain but it’s a factor of 10 less bad. It’s moved down from the worst thing I can currently imagine to being an inconvenience but the direction it is traveling is handedly towards the better (sadly my other bodily pains are unchanged).

The worst part of the incident for me was that I ended up basically dry heaving from both ends. My body was relentlessly trying to rend itself of whatever ills it had discovered. I quite honestly feel like I evacuated my entire body. I couldn’t vomit and I couldn’t even flatulate if I wanted, but my body continued to force me to try until my muscles were raw and weak. There is no other way to explain it, it was the most intense thing I’ve ever experienced.

I’ve broken bones, nearly had my spine snapped, and been hit in the chest with a rock the size of my head. Gotten nasty road rash and been on the wrong side of some pretty strong kicks. I’ve had a sunburn so bad that my skin turned to hide. But literally nothing compares to that pain.

I remember sitting there staring at the bathroom wall trying to cry but being unable to even do that. I was so locked in agony that I was a prisoner in my own body.

It was preceded by about a day or two of markedly excessive gas. So if you suddenly notice yourself bloating like a balloon without cessation you may want to stock up on pepto, pain killers, gas medication, and perhaps some ice packs or something. Because the “last day” of that experience, if its anything like mine, is going to throw you into a deep spiral of fear and agony.

There is also a possibility that these symptoms could be caused by imbalanced body functions due to stress. With that in mind I’m going in two days for Anxiety medication, I suggest you to look into the option if you are suffering from pain that isn’t linked to any diseases (all my tests come back negative and even within healthy parameters for instance, yet still I ache).

So that’s that. For the second real time in my life I genuinely, 100%, for a moment thought I was about to die. The last time it was falling 20 feet onto my head (those few seconds feel very very long while you are experiencing them) and I actually can’t say which one was scarier. This one involved intense unbearable pain and that earlier incident involved a few seconds of complete paralysis below the neck (as in I literally felt nothing below my Adam’s apple).

So yeah, tough to say. Which scares me more, immediate death or lifelong paralysis. Perhaps a thought for another day.